


Like Clockwork

by Pitseleh



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Backstory, Canon Gay Character, POV Third Person, Present Tense, asinine tags, unecessary exposition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-15
Updated: 2011-12-15
Packaged: 2017-10-27 08:49:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/293918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pitseleh/pseuds/Pitseleh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thomas closes his eyes and imagines a house, grand and sprawling, filled with beauty until it bursts. To live in such a place would not be so terrible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Clockwork

**Author's Note:**

  * For [storyofapainter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/storyofapainter/gifts).



> For the prompt 'when Thomas first knew he was different'. I tried to throw some back story and character study in, too. Thanks to the betas who beta'd (you know who you are), and have a great Yuletide, everybody.

Because the big bell in the main garden is broke, the boys have to wake up on their own. How it's supposed to be is: one of the sisters comes to wake them all up, but the sisters never do, and the boys will sleep in and miss breakfast if they aren't careful.

Some of the boys complain-- in hushed voices, of course, 'cause they aren't stupid _all_ the time-- that the sisters hate them and want this to be a girls' orphanage to train up more nuns, and they're all trying to make them miss out on breakfast and starve. Some say the sisters in the abbey broke the bell on purpose, and this is all part of their plan.

Thomas thinks that if they really wanted to punish the boys at St Hilda's, they'd make sure they all stayed put 'til each one died of old age.

"Wake up, Tommy." David Wilby shakes Thomas until he's awake, mind still muddled with images of his interrupted dream. But that lasts only two or three seconds; Thomas wakes fast and punches David's shoulder with all the mute force and blunt rage a ten year old can ever muster.

"Don't call me Tommy," he says, and runs through halls crowded with battered saints, listening for the shouts of children. It isn't smart, not knowing what's coming up.

Thomas finds the hall he's supposed to be in. It's full of children bent forward as if in prayer. They're scrubbing the floors.

Sitting to the side, reading a Bible because of _course_ she is, that's Sister Margaret. Like always, she looks like a painting. Not 'cause she's pretty-- Thomas thinks a lot of the ladies in paintings are right ugly-- but because she has a quality Thomas cannot, at ten, properly name. When he is older, he will call it being _aggressively typical_.

Sister Margaret looks up at Thomas and smiles exactly like you'd expect nuns to smile, and pats his shoulder because that's what nuns are supposed to do with orphans. "Tommy," she says, "I was wondering where you'd gotten to."

Thomas just nods. He knows the value of silence.

"Father Morris is waiting for you in the schoolroom." She smiles again and gives Thomas a gentle push in the right direction.

People are always trying to do that.

Thomas runs through more halls, all empty and ornate. His footsteps make hollow echoes on the stone floor, bouncing off the ceiling to meet the solemn saints crammed into every window. When he finds the schoolroom, it's empty save for Father Morris and another man. He's tall and pale, with greasy hair and sunken in eyes. He smiles at Thomas, and Thomas nods back, and stands in front of Morris, and says, "Sister Margaret said you wanted me here, Father." Father Morris never speaks until you state your purpose. It's a game he plays, and he always wins it.

"Thank you, Tommy," He says, like it matters. "This here is Mr Upshale." Father Morris motions to the sunken-eyed man. Upshale smiles again and touches his hat. Father Morris continues, "He asked if we have any boys old enough to start apprenticing under him, and you're the oldest boy here right now."

Thomas nods.

"Would you like to 'prentice under me, Tommy?" Upshale's eyes are so watery blue it seems like all the color leaked out of 'em years ago.

Thomas knows when to be daring.

"Only if you promise you'll call me _Thomas_."

Morris rolls his eyes, but Upshale looks surprised, and then amused, which is the only thing that matters right then. "All right, Thomas."

"All right, Mr Upshale."

It occurs to him later, driving away with Upshale's hat in his lap, that he hadn't even asked what he was apprenticing for.

❦

Clock-making and clock-fixing aren't so bad. You put your work in, and people don't bother you while you do it, and you go to bed. It takes some concentration, but that's nothing Thomas can't do. And it's a far better prospect than scrubbing floors until Judgement Day rolls around.

Upshale two daughters and one son and one dead wife. Five years ago, when Thomas had first come to be his apprentice, Upshale had explained his new world to him:

"I'd wanted two sons, so I could send one off to school, and one could become a proper clock-maker like me. But Annie died, and Geordie should go to school, he's plenty clever. As for the girls, if I so much as think you're fooling around with them, you're out on your ear."

And so, in the intervening years, Thomas perfects his outward display of cold indifference. It isn't difficult-- in fact, Thomas finds it quite useful, and works toward cultivating that facade to use for all-- they being three and five years older than him. By the time he's fifteen, Lucy is already married, and Eve prefers to pretend Thomas doesn't exist. The feeling is mutual; Eve says Thomas smells, and Eve look too much like her father to ever be properly pretty, even if Thomas weren't the creature it seems he is.

So the girls-- for they are, surely, a single entity-- leave Thomas alone, and in return for that great kindness, Thomas leaves them in a similar state. Now, if only he could get Geordie to leave him alone, too, he'd be in Heaven. That, and to disappear that nagging feeling, that notion that all clock-making is is taking orders and staying out of the way.

"Thomas, can you manage this one?" Upshale holds a pocket watch up for Thomas to see. "I have to go into town."

Thomas does as he's told.

Clocks are easy. Clocks always do the same thing, over and over, and if you think you've done it wrong, you'll know real quick. Clocks are easy, and if boredom could kill, Thomas would have shook hands with St Peter years ago. Luckily, only the cold of sleeping in a shop basement can kill someone, or the hunger of not being fed as well as a shopkeeper's real children. Thomas is pretty sure, with the bloody-minded poetic conviction characteristic of boys his age, that only pure spite is keeping him going.

Really, it's the fact that teenage boys are hard to kill with things other than malice outright. If they weren't, St Hilda's would not have seen such dense population.

Thomas finishes his work on time, and eats a sparse lunch, and avoids company as he can. Usually, Geordie finds him anyway. This time, their meeting is more transparently motivated by boredom-- Geordie's, not Thomas', though they surely both have ample stock-- than usual.

"Don't you have books to be studying?" Thomas says, refusing to look up from his work. He can hear Geordie sigh and wander round the shop before he speaks, peering over at the displays but never touching.

"It's Sunday, Thomas. _Normal_ people aren't working."

Thomas knows that. He knows it better than Geordie, probably. "So you've come to interrupt my work."

"Eve is so boring, and Papa is out." Geordie is probably smiling. Thomas doesn't look up.

"What d'you want, Geordie?"

Thomas is steadfast, concentrated on the clock he's bent over now, but he can hear Geordie walking toward him. He's stuck: looking up would be giving Geordie precidence, would admit far more than Thomas ever wants to they're not equal sons under Upshale. But to continue to avoid his gaze is to be ignorant of his movements.

As ever, Geordie makes the choice for Thomas.

He reaches across the counter and lightly taps Thomas' forehead. "Hey." He leans forward, his face inches away from Thomas'. "You... hey, promise not to tell anyone what I'm gonna say, alright?"

This is the worst thing about Geordie, as far as Thomas is concerned. He does honestly want to be Thomas' friend, nearly as much as Thomas wants to be his brother. But he also wants to rule over Thomas as much as Thomas wants to rule over everyone in the bloody country. And Geordie doesn't understand that he can't have both, about as much as Thomas understands that he'll never have neither.

So Thomas tries to restrain a sigh when he says, "All right, I promise. Now, what've you done this time?"

Geordie rolls his big doll eyes (presumably inherited from his mother) and smiles, resting his chin on his hand. "You know," he says in a deeply conspiratorial tone, "d'you know some blokes kiss each other? I didn't!" Geordie then launches into a tale he doubtlessly finds deeply fascinating: of reading Wilde and being told not to by his father, and then asking whyever for, and then learning exactly what sounds-- even secondhand-- like one of the more halting, awkward conversations one could have with Upshale (or Papa, as Geordie calls him throughout).

Thomas clears his throat. If he were honest-- but no, it never pays to be honest. And he knows better than to ever answer any of Geordie's inane questions with truth.

He can see Geordie's reflection in the glass of the counter. His expression, warped and obscured, still carries a strange weight, being mixed quantities of confusion and want.

Thomas wonders if he ever looks so transparent.

"Go bother your sister, Geordie," Thomas says. "I have work to be doing."

Geordie, recognizing rejection like Zechariah getting the news from Gabriel, complies.

❦

Thomas sleeps in the basement of _Upshale's Watchmaking and Clock Repair_ , in a little room to the back, outfitted with a bed (lumpy), a desk (for what, Thomas does not know; he has no chairs and is not allowed to bring materials from the shop into his room), and a single book (the Bible).

When Thomas was younger, he used to pretend the book was a diary, and pantomimed writing in the pages as he dictated aloud the events of the day. Now, in the more solemn descendant of that ritual, he stares at the Bible, closed on the desk, and thinks over what he's done before he allows himself sleep.

Often, his thoughts return to his position-- one of wanting and not having-- and the need to escape it. Of course, this is a simple thing to _think_ , but more difficult to accomplish.

Thomas knows he will not be the clockmaker Upshale wants. Not happily, at least. What _would_ make Thomas happy?

He closes his eyes and imagines a house, grand and sprawling, filled with beauty until it bursts. To live in such a place would not be so terrible. Thomas knows he is ungrateful, he isn't stupid. He lives better than most orphaned apprentices.

But if he lived in a fine house, even as a servant, he could perhaps avoid the exile of a basement bedroom. And, if not, at least he could take pride in his work. His effort would not be spent repairing items broken by men proved unfit to own a watch simply by appearing. But in a house, he could serve an essential function. He could organize, prepare, serve and sleep. Respect, and be respected.

Perfectly awake, Thomas dreams of the future.

On those rare nights when Thomas does not ruminate his place in the world, his mind often turns to wonder, either at himself or the world and its many workings. Today, Geordie spoke a name Thomas had heard before and answered a question that had lurked quietly at the back of Thomas' mind for years:

Were there others like them, or were Geordie and Thomas the only ones, born disfigured-- mentally and spiritually-- of unnatural circumstance?

(Thomas has often thought that Geordie had been warped, by growing up with no brothers but in close confines with a boy not his equal or superior. But this theory does not at all explain Thomas, whose emotion toward Geordie crosses the river of desire and drowns in a sea of envy.)

Perhaps if there were others, Thomas is not nearly as alone as sleeping in a basement might lead one to think.

And, perhaps if he were not an unnatural creature, he is just common enough a creature to be unique.

And, perhaps, such attributes can be advantageous.

Thomas falls asleep with a smile on his face.

❦

Later in life, Thomas will learn the value of moving quickly. But then is not now, and Thomas bides his time for two entire years before he makes his move.

As he will, when he is older, tell no one: he did not expect the feeling of disgust to rise in him afterward. The act, he finds, is enjoyable enough, but he will always hate it as a method of gain, and always promise himself never to use it so again. He will not, of course, ever really have that choice, but it will always be a desire held close to his heart.

Geordie, called George now by his school friends, is lying next to him, still luxuriating in the curious rush of sharing intimacies with a man even more common than he. Thomas looks down at him, at his hands, soft like his mind, neither having ever been trained for a higher purpose than his own pleasure. His revulsion is kept back, because if he is completely impassive for this next step, Geordie's reaction will be all the more satisfying.

Thomas stands, and begins to dress himself. "Geordie," he says, because he will call the oldest Upshale _Geordie_ until the day he dies. "I'm leaving."

"Splendid, tell the maid to bring some tea when you return, won't you?" Geordie speaks with the accent he's learned from his school friends, and now cleverly parrots back even to those-- like Thomas-- who know better. He just keeps staring at the ceiling, utterly pleased with himself, as if getting fucked in a basement is some sort of credit to his character.

Thomas buttons his shirt. "No," he says, and isn't that the most satisfying thing in the whole of England. "I'm leaving Upshale, going to run away in a week or so."

Geordie, accustomed to having the upper hand, does not realize he's lost it. He finally looks away from the ceiling, and smiles up at Thomas lazily. "I'm not going to run away with you, if that's what you're asking."

"I'm not asking," Thomas says, voice as flat as he can make it. "I'm running away, and you're not going to tell Upshale. What you _are_ going to do is write me a reference."

Geordie scoffed. "Oh, am I now?"

"Yes," Thomas says. "Or I'll tell Upshale where those letters you wrote me at school are hid."

The lazy smile on Geordie's face fades very quickly, and, no, _that_ is the most satisfying thing in the whole of England. The whole world.

❦

Downton is a dream. Thomas has still not been through the front entrance, doesn't think he ever will, but even then, the house is still magnificent.

The old butler, voice like a deflating toad, explains his duties, and Thomas imagines the house like a clock, all full of a thousand little gears and springs that must be kept ordered and pristine for there to be any precision at all. In a rare moment of truth, Thomas says as much to the butler, and he seems to approve, because Thomas is offered the job later that day.

Downton Abbey, by virtue of existing in truth, is far more beautiful than any painting, any hymn. He loves this house, he decides the first week in, like he is supposed to love a woman.

The work is good, organized and satisfying, and Thomas can quiet the part of him that howls at the injustice-- that he is _still_ taking orders-- with much more ease than he could at Upshale's. The other footman, an old man thinking of retiring, will be gone soon, and Thomas might be made head man in his stead, if he can stay on long enough.

So he works, and he works, and he doesn't let himself think about much else. Footman's demeaning work, he can't ignore that, but it's better than clockmaker, and if he can play his cards right, maybe one day he'll be a butler. Old Carson's got to give up the ghost one of these days.

After a day filled with polishing and bowing and scraping, Thomas catches a moment away from all the busy work of the house to have a smoke. He pats his breast pocket, only to remember he smoked his last cigarette before bed yesterday. He curses, and this is apparently enough of a universal gesture for the only other person in the back garden to hand him a cigarette without being asked. Intentionally or no, it is a moment of mercy: Thomas hates asking.

She's an old hag with a terrible, scowling face; on sight, all Thomas can recall about her is that she's the lady's maid of the house, and she's got a name as Irish as the day is long. And days are very long in Downton.

Thomas takes her cigarette.

"Don't expect me to be always giving you handouts," she says, bitter even in the face of kindness.

"Don't want handouts." To illustrate this, Thomas pulls out his own matches. "Once'll do me fine."

"Good, cause it's all you'll get." She takes a long drag from her cigarette.

Thomas says, "I know."


End file.
